Tag Archives: matchmaking

Promoted to Gold Nova III in five victories.

Screen Shot 2014-07-12 at 5.57.47 PM

How this matchmaking system thinks I’m somehow good enough to get anywhere close to AK level of skill is beyond me. The fact that it’s promoting me within so few victories is also mind-boggling. I’m not supposed to be decent at this game. I play on a Macbook Air using the built-in keyboard and a laptop-sized optical mouse. I haven’t turned off, much less tinkered with, any of OS X’s mouse acceleration properties—I haven’t even changed simple things like mouse sensitivity or the model position.

Or is Gold Nova just the middling rank that I think it really is, and the real skilled players start showing up at the Guardian levels? I wish I had some sort of reference as far as player skill and past performance to matchmaking rank. Maybe even a little bit more information about why I was promoted in so few matches. Something like “The last four games you played showed a remarkable improvement over the four before that” or “Winning games against opponents of higher ranks has caused this promotion.” Anything kind of explanation would do.

Rising through the ranks at this speed doesn’t reassure me that the system is working like it should. I don’t feel particularly confident about this rank up.

Oh well. I could always go back to Otela and throw frigates away in duels on EVE Online.

Reached Gold Nova II in eight wins—faster than I thought.

Screen Shot 2014-07-07 at 7.55.19 PM

Just started putting what I wrote after lunch today into practice and it definitely is working. Lowering the expectations of other players while just playing the best game that I can is definitely a winning strategy. Two wins in two matches and all I had to do was show up, really. Granted they were both on Dust 2, but at least that means I’m playing better for sure.

I’m still having trouble getting the hang of the AK. I think I might experiment with replacing what I typically buy on T as far as rifles are concerned. I think I’m going to start buying the Galil AR instead of the AK for a few matches to see if I can get better results with it. Otherwise, I’m just going to have to stick to the P90 or the UMP-45.

Promoted from Silver IV to Gold Nova I over two weeks.

Okay, when I said I was going to be updating every time I got promoted in the CS:GO matchmaking system, I think I wasn’t really expecting a promotion at the rate of less than ten wins peerage. If I can recall correctly, the day after I made my update post to Silver IV, I was promoted to Silver Elite.

Screen Shot 2014-06-25 at 7.32.30 PM

And then, after a few more losses than wins, I was finally placed into Silver Elite Master.Screen Shot 2014-06-30 at 7.12.37 PM

This past Saturday, even though I was one of the worst players on my winning team (it certainly felt like I was playing badly), I finally broke through to Gold Nova I.Screen Shot 2014-07-05 at 3.53.11 PM

I am noticing something that’s becoming a bit more prevalent in the games that I end up playing that has me a bit worried, though: when I make really stupid mistakes in the middle of a round that end up costing me my participating in that particular round, my first thought is that I am a moron and should stop playing. My second thought is to exclaim out loud my first thought. Now, since I can’t really yell “FUCKIN’ DAMMIT SHIT DAGNABIT I AM BAD AT THIS GAME” out loud in the house that I share with other people, I usually end up pounding my desk with my recently free mouse hand. I’m not sure how loud that is compared to me yelling over a mistake in the drama of the moment, but I imagine that it’s going to start wrecking my hand sooner or later.

One of the ways that I’ve started to combat this trend is to just let everyone on my team know, regardless of performance, of the following things, in no particular order:

  • I am bad at this game.
  • I am playing on a Mac.
  • I am playing on a wireless connection.
  • I have Comcast’s shit-tier home service.

Usually this causes some sort of laugh or at least a nervous acknowledgement or two from the players who have pics that can hear me, and we all move on with the understanding that I am bad, and I know I am bad.

This usually turns around the mindset of playing for me, which isn’t just to get as many wins as I can, but it’s to prove myself wrong, that I’m not completely terrible at the game and that a i7 BTO MacBook Air is a perfectly fine gaming machine for Source games like CS:GO.

Maybe not that last bit so much, but the first bit for sure.